“We're talking about billions of dollars that we've already found. We found fraud and abuse”

Public remarks accompanying DOGE's published savings figures

Elon Musk himself, the man running DOGE, contradicted Trump directly. On Joe Rogan's podcast in late February 2025, Musk said: "It's mostly waste. It's mostly not fraud, it's mostly waste. It's mostly just ridiculous things happening." Fraud is a crime requiring proof of intent to deceive; DOGE never produced evidence of it, let alone referred 'massive fraud' for prosecution.

DOGE's own ledger doesn't say 'fraud' either. Its website attributed claimed savings to "a combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions": a grab bag in which fraud is at most one small slice. ABC News rated Trump's 'hundreds of billions in fraud' claim unverifiable; DOGE had posted receipts for only about 30% of its claimed total.

Even the 'savings' numbers collapsed under scrutiny. As of early March 2025, DOGE claimed $105 billion saved but itemized only $8.86 billion in canceled contracts, and CBS News found that data riddled with errors: contracts counted multiple times and 'savings' booked at contract ceiling values that were never going to be spent. DOGE provided no specific evidence of fraud in the contracts it canceled.

"Only the federal government could get away with this level of waste. It's mostly waste. It's mostly not fraud, it's mostly waste. It's mostly just ridiculous things happening." — Elon Musk, then-DOGE leader, on The Joe Rogan Experience, late February 2025